Be the One
by llghtwoods
Summary: post-cohf. in which we find out if you can really fall back in love, simon and izzy try to mend there broken, broken relationship, and everyone wonders why love is so difficult.


**Notes: **

**Okay, so I posted the first couple chapters of this a bit ago so you may have read it, but then a bunch of shit happened and I never updated it so I'm reposting the first couple chapters and then I'll continue with the next chapters. Also all of these characters belong to the lovely Ms. Cassandra Clare. And thanks to Hayley (cityofsizzy) for editing it. Enjoy!**

_"Oh, DJ, ease my mind will you_

_play that song again_

_cause we were in love_

_before,_

_before the rain began_

_and if i cry cover my ears"_

Alec Lightwood had woken up to the wretched, broken sounds of his sister's wailing. It was the second time that week. The first time he had ignored it, and fallen back to sleep, trying to pretend it wasn't real. But this time he decided to check on her, her room was only a couple paces and a corner away, and Alec arrived in a matter of a minute.

Her door was left halfway open out of carelessness. When he twisted his head to look inside, Alec could make out Izzy's figure in the dark. Her back hunched, Simon's too-big t-shirt crinkling and folding along the line of her spine. Her tears cut down her face in angry rivers that caught the light given off by the small lamp on her bedside table. In her hands, which where shaking in violent movements, in sync with the rest of her body, was a notebook. It was bound with red leather and there was something scribbled on the cover which Alec couldn't make out. Ever since Simon, Izzy had been carrying it around, guarding the small object with her life.

Every so often her sobs turned to shouting and her face became ugly and contorted with anger as she faded away from what she once was. He knew that he should comfort her, to be her brother in the time when she needed him, but he was entranced by how vulnerable she seemed. There were few times when Isabelle Sophia Lightwood broke down. Isabelle, who had a heart of stone. Isabelle, who was a warrior not a girl. Isabelle, who kept her love hidden inside her, who protected her heart in a cage, guarded with tigers, challenging someone to try to steal it.

And before he knew it Izzy had looked up from the pages of the notebook to meet Alec's eyes.

"What?" She spat at him, defensively. "It's not like you would understand, _Alexander_." She said his full name like it was an insult. "You get to live happily ever after with your boyfriend, don't you?"

He stood still, unable to respond.

"And Jace and Clary are fucking engaged." Her voice was sarcastic and bitter. She stared back down at the notebook. "And what do I have other than a notebook that he didn't even remember to give me!"

She threw the notebook across the bedroom and it hit the window pane.

"And now I'm the joke, right?" She scoffed. Got up. Walked over and picked up the notebook.

Alec caught a better look at it in the light and saw that on the red leather cover, there were words scrawled in black Sharpie.

_'You broke my heart. You broke my heart. You broke my heart. You broke my heart…'_

The words where repeated too many times to count and Alec didn't want to imagine his sister scribbling the words like a madman, sitting in the corner of her room, barely able to function because of how miserable she was.

"Izzy…" was all Alec could manage to say and it came out distant and soft, so quiet he was sure she couldn't have heard him.

"I loved him, you know?" She said, staring at the wall, talking more to herself than to Alec. "I really did." She let out a mangled laugh, tilting her back.

"And I never-" her words were taken from her by a sob that forced it's way up her throat and past her chapped lips.

She started to viciously swipe at her face with the jacket sleeve, rubbing off the snot and tears.

"I never even told him." Her words were in sync with the violent shaking of her hands, as if they were one, as if they were both fighting the same battle, as if they were both losing.

Alec's bare feet made a sort of thumping noise against the wooden floors boards, which was drowned out by the sound of Izzy weeping.

"I'm sorry." He said, and awkwardly placed a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off. He let it fall to his side in defeat. "I'm truly sorry."

It was the best he could give her. His apologizes. He couldn't even bring himself to promise that Magnus could get more of his memories back. He couldn't bring himself to lie to her like that, not after all that she'd been through. He told himself that she was strong enough. And he believed himself.

She was the strongest at The Institute. Perhaps not physically but emotionally. She had been through so much and she had been so strong, as if she had a barrier, a wall that protected her from pain. But he supposed that when you are strong for so long, when so many canons are fired at your stone wall, eventually its bound to break.

So, instead of saying anything more, Alec stood up and paced to the other side of the room where a rarely used desk was placed before the Lightwood's had ever lived in the tall, old building. He picked up a blue capped pen and went back to Izzy, placing it in her hand, which lay slightly open, as if about to grasp another human's hand, about to hold someone else's heart that perhaps was more put together than hers.

"Write about him." Alec said. It was a statement. Only three words. It was all he could manage. But he hoped she understood what it meant. He hoped she understood that if she wasn't ready to meet the new Simon, that perhaps she could find comfort in the old Simon. In the leather bound notebook, so red it looked as if Izzy's heart had bleed on to it as it was falling apart.

She lifted her chin and stared at him, their eyes meeting. He could see how red and puffy the rims of her eyes were, how her whole face looked covered in tears, how her eyes seemed to be screaming not just with anger but with sadness. And in a single breath she said her final words for the rest of the night. They were bitter and cruel and hopelessly desperate. They were a croak, they were followed by more retched sobs that would keep Alec up for the rest of the night. They were broken and savage, an accusation, an excuse.

"This should be you."

Feet walk. Door slammed. Wooden panels filling vision. One side of the room wishing to go back to sleep. One side of the room wishing to go back.

Izzy Lightwood's knuckles had become a watercolor of purple, blue, and black tones over the past week, as she had made a habit out of continuously beating them against the off-white walls of the Institute. She wished that she could stop but it had become addictive, like what drugs and sex and alcohol once were to her. She welcomed the pain that it brought her, the pain that she could only feel through the destruction of her body or the insomnia of late nights. For the majority of the day consisted of a sort of emptiness, as if part of her was missing, as if there was a gap in heart where Simon once was, a gap that her body had forgotten how to live without. Because this, how she was living now, this wasn't really living.

She woke up to down her breakfast with a shot of whiskey were the rest of the group had milk, water, or orange juice. It wasn't enough to get her drunk, but it was enough to create a sort of fog. To let her forget about Simon for a little bit. Then she would train with Jace and Clary till lunch, where she would do her best to block out the sound of happiness, often ending up back into her room, only to let herself crumble away piece by piece as her fists beat against what was once her home.

She only found happiness in the occasional good dream, as most of her dreams had transformed into nightmares. But these happy dreams where only ruined by waking. By the bright yellows of a fake future being slashed in half, being cut through, being violently ripped by the cold, dark tear of the tragically real present.

She knew what the others thought of her. They thought that she was weak, that all she was any more was a heart broken girl, a faded version of what she once was. She had found out that they had started hunting demons without her, claiming that she 'needed time,' when she confronted them, trying to show how strong she could be, the confrontation had only ended in her own tears.

And sometimes being around them, Clary and Jace and Alec and Magnus and Maia and Bat made her feel a sort of sickening feeling. They didn't understand anything she had been through. They pretended to, but the truth was they didn't feel empathy towards her, only pity. Against all odds they had all survived, had all been given the fairytale endings that where so rare for shadowhunters. And Izzy hadn't gotten that. She was nothing more than a mockery, just another shadow hunter bound to die tragically and lonely.

At this point she wasn't sure how much she cared when it happened.

The hardest part, Simon decided, was saying goodbye. Or rather, not saying goodbye. Having to start the morning like it always started. Having to grumble to his mom that he didn't need a ride to school, that he would catch one with Eric. Having to pretend that it wouldn't be the last time he ate the plate of burnt toast that his sister had made for him in hurry.

He wished he could tell them.

He wished that he would hug his mother and cry and tell her how much he loved her.

He wished that he hadn't been instructed to act as if nothing was going to happen later that day.

As if nothing had already happened.

Only two days ago he had ascended, the angels had blessed him with something he still couldn't quite understand, something more than human, something heavenly.

'A gift,' the red-haired girl had said, with her kind smiles.

But leaving everyone he loved, that didn't seem like much of a gift to him. It seemed more like a curse.

Maybe, he hoped, he could find a new family, maybe he could grow to love a group of warriors.

He thought of the girl with the whip. _Izzy Lightwood. _Apparently she had loved him. Apparently the most beautiful girl he had ever seen loved him. Simon Elliot Lewis, loser who had never even kissed a girl.

It was almost funny.

Except for the fact that she seemed so, so sad.

He wanted to be the hero again. He wanted to be the guy who she could fall in love with again. He wanted to be the one. The one who would be there for her no matter what. The one who would love her, and care for her, and comfort her. He wanted to be who they thought he was.

Even if he was still figuring out just who that was.

**Notes:**

**So thanks a bunch for making it this far I guess and since you're here you might as well leave a review? In case your curious the title comes from the song Be the One by Moby (the fic is in no way based off of this song, I just thought it sounded nice). The words at the beginning are from Ease My Mind and at this point I don't even know who originally made that song. And also my tumblr is .com, so if you want to send me a one shot request, give me feedback, or just ask me your questions about this fic, you can also do that there. **

**~Izzy**


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